WAS PRIMITIVE MAN A MODERN SAVAGE? 543 



was universal, we do not yet know. A large explanatory field in myth, 

 legend, and religion rests, however, on the assumption, first, that canni- 

 balism was universal, and second, that it was primitive, though the 

 habit is, as we know, in some modern savages of recent introduction 

 and adoption. Yet, before admitting that 'cannibalism and its other 

 concomitants were both primitive and universal, is it not fair to ask — 

 since the higher apes are in many instances decently monogamous and 

 comparatively peaceful — for more proof before we are fully persuaded 

 in our own minds that the particular pithecoid ape which aspired from 

 the brute to man, sank, on developing human traits, into the savage 

 mire in which most prehistoric theory plunges him 1 ? 



This theory rests on the inference — and let us remember it is only an 

 inference — that the modern savage explains primitive man, and this 

 inference rests in its turn on the assumption not only that the modern 

 savage and primitive man are alike in culture, but that they are also 

 alike in character and that they both act, one in the past and the other 

 now, under similar conditions. They may. In one most important par- 

 ticular there is no proof that the essential condition is similar; quite 

 the contrary. The modern savage is under pressure. In Australia, 

 at his lowest, he is under the pressure of a desiccated and desiccating 

 continent. 



Indisputably a decreasing precipitation has made the struggle for 

 food more severe for him within a comparatively recent period. The 

 Polynesian savage is under the pressure of exiguous insular territory. 

 The Malaysian savage is under hostile intertribal pressure, stimulated 

 by the ease of water communication in an island and tropical world. 

 The African savage is under a like pressure, relieved by obstacles of 

 transit on a continent where, taken collectively, the coast line is in 

 small ratio to area, waterways few, and deserts many. The Eskimo 

 is under arctic pressure. Nearly everywhere the modern savage is or 

 has been under contiguous civilized pressure. 



It is a familiar truism of both the savage and the barbarian that each 

 owes his worst qualities to this pressure. Deterioration succeeds 

 wherever it is applied. Under pressure civilized man may be at his 

 best, as witness the high civilization which the needs of a cold winter 

 will develop in those who face it with some civilized capital; or the 

 rapid development of our railroad system under the pressure of trans- 

 continental distances. Under pressure, be it heat, cold, a spare food 

 sux>ply, difficult communication, or civilized neighbors, a savage or a 

 barbarian is at his worst. For his development some opportunity for 

 expansion, some freedom from pressure, seems essential. Nowhere is it 

 clearer that the pressure of civilization works ruin for him than on this 

 continent. Here, too, if this was escaped until a late period, there 

 existed in two'or three great centers, if not the pressure of civilized 

 barbarism, at least the pressure of a barbarian civilization in Mexico, 

 Central America, Peru, and perhaps elsewhere. 



